What's Your Favorite Propaganda Device?

The World Union of Jewish Students has listed seven of the most common propaganda tactics used by politicians on their website. Most of these tactics, while they are effective, make use of logical fallacies (I remember the logical fallacy poll awhile ago, but this is slightly different).

So, my question is, if you were a politician, and you were going to run a campaign to build public support for one of your policies, and HAD to use one (and only one) propaganda tactic to obtain that support, which would you use?

Of course I realize most of you are good people, and wouldn't use propaganda at all. But, just for the sake of argument, which device do you think would be most effective?

http://www.wujs.org.il/activist/features/campaigns/propaganda_devices.shtml

My personal feeling is that fear is the most effective tool one could use to manipulate ones' constituents.

If anyone else has any other devices to add, and would like to explain how they work, I'd love to hear about those, too!

Duct tape, anyone?

If you only KNEW my angle....

Also promoting your rival to the hilt, making sure much praise is heaped on their campaign and their televised coverage is chivvied up....until the truth comes out

Tons of devices here. Blame everything on Clinton, no matter what.

I guess that's glittering generality.

"glittering generality" is actually a positive thing. It's the opposite of name calling. A good example would be Bush saying that Australia is the "sheriff" of South-East Asia. You use general, complimentary terms to "talk up" allies or policies. It's positive "characterization"- characterization is something this administration engages in a LOT. It's simple and appeals to their stupid constituents.

If I were a politician and compelled to use a logical fallacy, I would use non-sequiturs. It's at least possible to get some kind of artistic experience that way.

Phil Agre of the Red Rock Eater's deconstruction of Election 2000 truth-slaying attacks by Republican operatives and their dupes on the Internet:

http://www.spectacle.org/1200/agre.html

Agre analyses the abuses of Projection, which Republicans and right wingers--actually any ideologue who has an any-means-necessary compulsion to advance the cause--are particurly apt to fall into using. Whereas most people think of propaganda as a conscious choice to deceive, projection is more insidious. If it were conscious, it would be something like the Situationist idea of détournement--taking a popular icon and subverting it to mean something opposite, much as Ad Busters does with corporate brands. But it isn't conscious. Here's how Agre describes it:


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Several people have asked me where they can read more about the role of projection in politics. It would seem that we are stuck with it. The answer is, I don't know of any political works that discuss the role of projection, which I find surprising given what I perceive as overwhelming dominance of projection in contemporary political discourse. The best book about projection that I know, at least the best for a general audience, is Robert Bly's "A Little Book on the Human Shadow" (Harper and Row, 1988). Bly uses the Jungian word "shadow" instead of "projection", but that doesn't mean you have to buy the totality of Jung's theories. The idea is that people who disown parts of themselves thereby acquire a "shadow": the disowned parts are still real and active, but they operate secretively, under the cover of a darkness that one creates by dimming one's own consciousness. Some people disown the weak parts of themselves, or the emotional parts, or even (as in George W. Bush's case) the intelligent parts. Faced with the problem of getting rid of these parts of themselves, people often project those disowned, negatively valued parts into other people. Someone who has homosexual feelings, for example, might choose to disown them, project them, and thereby develop a hatred for homosexuals. This is perhaps one reason why conservative operatives are so often discovered to have hidden lives.

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Anyone who has debated a winger about Election 2000 will surely have come across projection. Just think of all those nuts out there who apparently believe with all their "hearts" and "souls" that Al Gore tried to steal the election. This is a very common propaganda tool, and it's particularly dangerous because it infests its host. The employer of this tool is not in control of it. It is in control of him or her.

and that his intelligence is a part of his "shadow"

I agree. Bush* is very intelligent, but he hides it from himself by taking on the pose of being bored with detailed facts and his lack of curiousity. Meanwhile, his adroit use of propoganda demonstrates a natural intelligence for matters political.

His incuriosity and intellectual passivity demonstrate a fear and revulsion of that side of himself that is curious and intellectually creative. That's what Agre is getting at. But that's straightforward (if that's the right term) psychological projection.

As a propaganda tool, projection is employed to turn a revulsion with one's own camp's perceived weaknesses, such a tendency to subvert democratic institutions and steal elections, against the other side. If you're a winger, you can't express disgust with James Baker's smarmy performance. You have to attack Richard Daley for being the son of Boss Daley.